Now that the Pete Kendall saga is over, the Jets kindly request that everyone goes back to focusing on football.

Whether that’s good news or bad has a lot to do with how Gang Green, especially quarterback Chad Pennington, performs tonight in a preseason game against the Giants.

There’s always debate how much importance should be placed on preseason games, but it would be disconcerting if Pennington and Co. played as poorly as they did last week in a 37-20 loss to the Vikings. Pennington was 7-of-10 for 40 yards and was picked off twice.

“I feel good,” Pennington said. “We’ve had some good practices getting to the end of training camp. Now you start to focus on resting and taking care of your body and try to get geared up for the regular season and use these next few opportunities to hone some things.

“But it’s not the end of the world. The game of football is going to create some adversity and challenges and you’ve got to be able to attack those challenges and face those challenges head on. You have to realize that in the preseason you do everything you can to be successful and if something doesn’t work out, you move on and learn from it.”

The Jets were one of the surprise teams in the NFL last season, posting a 10-6 record, and there are playoff expectations in ’07. Pennington rebounded from a second shoulder surgery to complete almost 65 percent of his passes with 17 touchdowns and 16 interceptions.

Clearly he must increase the number of scoring passes and cut down on the picks if the Jets, who face a more difficult schedule than last year, are to match or better that 10-6 mark.

“Chad to me is such a consistent guy, which is really what you’re looking for, his approach, and I experienced this all last season,” Eric Mangini said. “His approach stays the same and his work ethic stays the same, and he’s just very focused at having everything as precise as possible.”

Pennington hasn’t had much of an opportunity to display his precision. He could see more work against the Giants. Certainly Pennington has questions about his offensive line in the wake of the trade of Kendall to the Redskins and the promotion of rookie Jacob Bender to the first team at left guard.

“We’re making progress,” Pennington said. “We’re still ironing some things out and doing some different things. We’re trying to work on some of the details of the fundamentals that we want to get better at and start to prepare ourselves even more and be more detailed. This is just the next step in a long process.”

As a team and as an offense we want to be able to feel comfortable and confident in what we’re doing and always understand that we’re trying to get better and enjoy the process each week, including the whole season. You want to keep making progress, and that’s what we’re focused on.”